Ultimately, I came damned closed to preferring the original. I switched repeatedly between it and an unmodded Skyrim original install with Bethesda's official high-res texture pack added in, and it didn't take long to reach that perfect pitch of meaningless insanity that is deciding between two different shades of white to paint your bathroom.
Lighting gets a boost, in a way that will probably prove divisive if anything, and it goes out of its way to show off a new but ultimately incidental depth of field effect in its introductory sequence. The special edition boasts various new graphical features on paper, but in practice you'll be hard pushed to notice many of them. A brand new, truly 2016 Skyrim this is not - but it might yet be. If anything, you might find that it's a step down from your modded original Skyrim with the Bethesda high-res texture pack, and a dark return to the infuriating official interface to boot.
Play it today and you'll be lucky to feel there's been any meaningful change. Though consolefolk are revelling in a spike from fuzzy 720p to crisp-textured 1080, on PC The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition is about as transformational as wiping the toilet seat (well, depending on who exactly used it before you did).
